


Counterfeit Coping Mechanism

by friedgalaxies



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-19
Updated: 2018-04-19
Packaged: 2019-04-24 22:13:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14364786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/friedgalaxies/pseuds/friedgalaxies
Summary: Sometimes the drink alone isn’t enough.She's never done this because she wants to. If she could stop, she would. But sometimes, what you have isn't enough. And she needs more.





	Counterfeit Coping Mechanism

**Author's Note:**

> man we all love a lil Nott angst don't we? i recommend listening to Overdose by Grandson (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7pge-llkKU), Everybody Gets High by MISSIO (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHukwv_VX9A), and Favorite Color Is Blue by Robert DeLong (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQUtJqnvvBw) while reading this! please tell me what you think, i live off of comments.

Sometimes the drink alone isn’t enough.

Sometimes the drink alone isn’t enough, and they all know this. No matter how many swigs of gods knows what she takes from the trusty flask strapped to her bony hip beneath layers of frayed and fading cloth, it’s not enough to replace the shake in her hands with one that scares her far less. Sometimes, if they’re lucky enough to find themselves in the belly of a tavern in a city that doesn’t spit at their feet sooner than they’d draw a blade and hold it to Molly or Jester or Fjord’s throat (never her- she knows well enough to conceal herself and hide behind Caleb at this point) she’ll be deep in tankard after tankard of dark liquor that makes the room swim and the concerned lines between Caleb’s brows draw ever tighter.

She wouldn’t have chosen to drink, if you’d asked her. But there are only so many ways to stop that bastardly trembling Itch that claws itself up the back of her throat, at her spine, makes her hands shake and her pupils draw to slits, darting around for the nearest shiny thing like a feverish magpie.

It is called liquid courage, after all, and no one needs liquid courage more than Nott-the-Brave.

But it’s days like these, when the Itch and the memories and the aches that claw at her limbs are too strong to be staved off by the horrid mixture of piss poor liquor taken from different taverns in her travels and swirling together in a concoction that would make anyone with a lesser stomach retch at her hip. It nearly made Mollymauk lose his lunch, once, on a tense afternoon with another near brush with death. He’d swiped her flask before she could warn him- or swat at him for trying to take another one of her treasures, that bastard- and took a hearty swig, though he was no sooner dry heaving into a bush. He’d handed her back her flask with a new look of understanding in his narrowed red eyes, and something like disgust, though she just clutched at her flask with torn, dirty claws and gave him what could only be called a smile over a nervous sneer if one were feeling very generous with a too-wide mouth too full of jagged yellow teeth.

Caleb has left on a mission hunting for more books with a small satchel of coins Nott had recently swiped him, though if he was suspicious of her decline to follow him along on said venture he didn’t show it beyond his usual nervous exterior. He was like an mangy street cat, in that regard. His body language constantly screamed anxious and afraid enough so that it was hard to differentiate between his normal state and actual fear. Nott, herself, would like to think she’d gotten pretty good at reading him in that regard, after so many months spent together, though she’d been a bit more preoccupied in the moment. Besides the thought of her treasures she planned on using in this short time she was alone, the thoughts and the Itch and the pain screaming at her was enough to cloud her mind already.

That’s why she needed to do this. She needed to be ready, prepared, active in battle. Just a moment alone, a moment of weakness, of a habit she knew most of the group would disapprove of in some regard. She couldn’t protect Caleb from harm if she couldn’t even protect her from herself. The slowly scabbing over scratches along her forearms, dug deep alongside scars she’d given herself the same way over the years, were testament enough to that.

She locked the door for extra measure- if someone came by, she’d just shout she was naked. She’d heard Jester use that excuse enough times already to commit it to memory. By the time she was done here, though, she wasn’t sure if she was going to be aware enough to even remember her own name. She jerked open the shaky window frame, perching somewhat precariously on the shabby nightstand affixed below it. It wasn’t cluttered with either her nor Caleb’s things, thankfully; neither of them spread their items out among where they were staying, just in case.

Old habits die hard.

She picked up this habit way back when, when she was still a member of her clan. Just thinking about it makes her shiver. Among the items she’d swiped from what was surely some stuck-up asshole’s pockets was a small, nondescript leather bag, just barely big enough to fit comfortably in the seat of her palm. Inside the drawstring pouch was a familiar sight, that of almost nondescript brown leaves, dried and curled up in spiraling shapes, fragile enough to break apart with just a few flicks of her ragged claws. She almost hadn’t recognized it at first, having not seen it for so long, but the smell had stirred up a long since forgotten (intentionally so, says the sickly little voice at the back of her head) memory, buried beneath the detritus of trauma and the happy memories she was desperately trying to make with this ragtag group she hesitantly dubbed her “friends”.

She had been much younger then, of course, not nearly as scarred, though approaching it quickly. She’d just been beaten up- again- by a few of her littermates, still hearing the echoing cackles from where they’d been standing in a loose half circle, kicking her in the ribs and clawing at her, as she fled deeper into the woods surrounding the battered clearing her clan inhabited. The quickly blooming bruises along her torso and face stung with the same sharp bitterness their taunts of, _“what’re you doing on the ground, Nott-the-Brave?” “no wonder no one likes you for anything but target practice, Nott-the-Brave”_ had. She was decently sure she’d lost a tooth, if the taste of copper in her mouth and coating her tongue was anything to go by. That, or they’d split her lip again.

She’d all but collapsed into the reeds surrounding a decrepit pond, where the water was more brown than blue and warty toads scattered into the leaves at her fumbling presence. Strange, curly leaved plants grew at the perimeter of the pond, several of the leaves broken off and mixed among the standard debris coating the forest floor.

The smell had struck her first. A bitter, pitch-esque smell that made her nose wrinkle, before it faded into something sweet. Something airy and light, something that made her feel like she was coming home to a home she’d never knew she had. She crawled through the leaves, snagging her fresh wounds on the sharp ends of green sticks, freshly broken off, as she went, snatching up a few of those strange, dried and brown, curly leaves in her palm. The pull was too much and she wolfed down the handful of them without so much as a few seconds of inspection, which, looking back on it, was far from her greatest moment.

There had been hunger clawing at her stomach then, amongst the fear and pain, from too many meals kept from her by greedy clanmates. You grabbed quickly and as much as you could and didn’t worry about others when it came to meals in a goblin clan.

And she lay there on the forest floor, the world above her spinning and the sky she could see poking through the leafy forest canopy far, far above her small head fading from blue to orange to black and back again, she didn’t feel… anything. The pain lifted away. The taunting cries and insults slipped her mind for that day and a half she lay there (she’d be soon to find no one had even noticed she was gone when she returned from her trip on the forest floor) and nothing seemed to matter. Nothing was her everything. The gentle croaks of the nearby toads stretched into a white static buzz in her ears, and for a while, she was nothing.

The memories of her first, and the strongest of any, trips she’d ever taken stirred at the back of her mind through the harsh buzz coating the inside of her skull as she struggles to light the roll she’s made. She curses under her breath, worrying at her lower lip and tasting copper from the blood her jagged, broken teeth have drawn from beneath the skin, worn thin from countless hours of her constant anxious habit.

She burns herself with another snap of her fingers, the way she’s seen Caleb do it thousands upon thousands of times, nearly dropping her blunt and scrambling to catch it. The small amount she has gathered here is too precious to waste. She has no idea when she’s going to come across this again, if she ever does, the further and further north they go.

And with the more stares they get, the more people who spit at Molly and Jester’s feet, the more mothers that draw their children close as they pass, the more crowns guard that grip the hilts of their swords as Fjord approaches them with his usual easy grin, gods know she’s gonna fucking need it.

They’re even getting suspicious of Yasha the further north they climb, and it’s not the usual wide-eyed stare and babbling looseness of the jaw that comes with seeing the huge barbarian woman as she ducks her head to fit through the doorway of a building, whether it be tavern or official political chambers they’ve managed to worm their way into. It’s the same suspicious wide-eyed look they get after parsing through the obnoxious spray of color that is Mollymauk, or the pretend-naive whirlwind that is Jester. It’s sneaking a glance around her, past her broad shoulders and muscled biceps, to quickly comb the streets with a glance for any passing crowns guard.

Nothing, however, will reach the vicious vitriol in people’s stares as Nott’s porcelain mask slips from her hollow, bony cheeks, or a shift of bandages reveals a slip of scarred and calloused bitter green skin, or a shift of her hood betrays the point of a long, twitching ear, pierced with a handful of gold studs and and ripped at the ends from flying claws she doesn’t want to think about anymore.

No one thinks about Nott until it’s to worry about the trouble she’s going to get them into.

The thought percolates bitterly in her mind as she finally gets the blunt to light and takes that first, long needed drag, holding the smoke inside her lungs and letting it flow into her. The warmth drips into her slowly, at first, like candle wax that’s barely hot enough to flow, and then fast, with the sizzling burn and pop of hot oil. She coughs, smoke billowing around her and perfuming the air around her with that sickly sweet smell, like that of dead flowers lit aflame.

She’s done this more times than she cares to remember now, but it’s always preceded by too much. Too Much.

She never does this because she wants to. She never does these things because she wants to. She does them because she _has_ to. She has to curl her aching fingers around her flask and drink from it like a drowning man gulping air into his water-soaked lungs. She doesn't do it for fun. She sure as hell doesn’t do it to see the sadness that paints Caleb’s expression, a sadness that she pushes out of her vision and pretends it’s about something else.

She doesn't steal because she wants to. She knows how much trouble it can bring them, does bring them. She’s not an idiot, despite the way they whisper behind their hands about her and cast sidelong glances in her direction like she is. Like she’s the too-slow child they’ve all been paid to babysit, that they keep around because she’s entertaining sometimes, or because she occasionally shares her treasures with them.

She knows she’s in it for the money. She’s also in it for the safety. She’s in it to keep Caleb safe. She doesn’t give a shit about herself. Never has, doubtlessly ever will. This body is gonna change one day, anyway. Somehow.

She sits there for a long while, smoking, blowing the rings out the window and watching them disappear into the sky as it drips from blue to a pinkish orange and the sun begins to dip beyond the horizon. There’s only the roach left when she hears the footsteps coming up the squeaky wooden staircase of the inn, the middle of the stairs worn down smooth after thousands upon thousands of pairs of feet have passed over them over the years. She curses to herself, snuffing the flickering light barely in the stub of greyish-white paper and crumbly brown herb out against the inside of her forearm alongside a small collection of similar scars, pulling her sleeve down to cover it.

The buzz painting the inside of her skull slowly drooled out of her ears a while ago, where she suspects it’s pooled along the floor for all to see. All her thoughts, all her Itch, all her pain that clings to her bones and makes her joints creak, all the torment that swirls around inside her like the violent, angry sea she’s heard Fjord talk about to the others with in hushed tones.

She unlocks the door to her room, but only after she’s stashed her paraphernalia away in her pack, tucked deep beneath the surface and sandwiched between her one spare change of clothes. She sits back up on her bed, amongst the covers swirled in a tangled mess from where she’s kicked them in her sleep, tossing and turning during the throes of a nightmare. She’s starting to feel the hum return beneath her skin, but it’s quieter now, stiflfed beneath the wads of cotton clouding her head and making the stars she can see beginning to pepper the sky through the still open window swirl in a hypnotic dance.

“Nott?”

A voice comes through the door, not one she’s expecting at all. For a second she thinks its the high making everything come out thicker and slower than usual, like she’s moving through a vial of sweet syrup, but the knock at the door that follows solidifies it. Caleb always knocks a certain way, a certain pattern, just for the two of them. They picked it up way back in the beginning, to let the other know it was them and no one else, that they were safe, still, and never dropped it. Besides, the pitch of the knocks is too low. Someone else’s fist, someone bigger, broader, than Caleb.

Fjord.

“Come in.” Her voice comes out scratchier than usual and she clears her throat. “It’s open.”

The door creaks open and there stands Fjord with a hand partially over his eyes, like he expects her to be indecent. He lowers his hand when he sees her sitting, cross legged, fully clothed on the shabby inn bed, mask discarded a few feet away from her among the sheets and limbs drawn up in a loose knot.

“Caleb an’ I just got back from book shoppin’. He’s downstairs nose-deep in his finds already and asked me to check on ya’,” he steps further into the room as he speaks and Nott finds it hard to focus on him. The myriad of shades of green on his skin swims together, mixing with the yellow of his eyes and fading into the black of his hair. She swipes a knuckle across her eyes and he’s still there, one hand at his waist and the other resting loosely at his side.

His face draws up in what appears to be a concerned expression and then morphs into one of disgust, nose crinkled up tightly, heavy brows drawn together and eyes flicking across the room.

“You get a new perfume or somethin’? I didn’t take ya’ to be the type.” He sniffs, and takes another step closer to her.

She’s barely able to formulate her words together in a coherent string, an excuse at the tip of her loose tongue before he leans into her space, an accusatory expression on his face as he peers closely at her. Closer than he ever has before. She leans back in response, skull thudding against the wooden headboard of the bed, the pain only registering as a dull throb through the cotton in her head.

“Are you high?”

“What?” Her voice comes out much higher than she means it to and she glances to the side, avoiding his gaze. The window is still open. Shouldn’t the smell have filtered out by now? Is it her? “I-I have no idea what you’re talking about-”

“Your pupils are the size of fuckin’ dinner plates- Nott, why in the hells-” He leans away from her and sneezes. “No wonder you’re high. C’mon.” He reaches for her arm, and that open hand feels like a death sentence.

“No!” The word feels like water in her mouth, it sloughs out so quickly, filtering through her teeth and leaving her gasping for air. She ducks out of the way of his hand, though her movements are slow. It’s a different kind of slow from when she’s drunk- the rare times she manages to be, with the tolerance she’s built up over the years. Instead of feeling slow and like she’s moving through stagnant, hot air, it’s like all her joints have been replaced with cotton, weak and stiff. She nearly slips and cracks her head open on the floor and she hears several of her joints crack loudly with a sickening pop. In any other situation, she would love to see the grimace that is surely on Fjord’s face.

Right now, she feels like a caged animal in a cage of her own creation. She can’t let the others see her like this. If Fjord was able to clock her this easily, who knows what the others will think.

Especially Caleb. She can’t ever let him see her like this. She’s supposed to be the strong one.

“Nott- calm down a damn minute!”

She stops, poised on the floor on all fours, feeling like a coiled spring ready to pop at any moment.

He crouches down to her level, looking her deep in the eye, and she picks a swath from the myriad of green on his face to focus on. There’s a lime colored patch on his cheek, below his eye and right where it fades into the bridge of his nose. He grabs at her again, this time managing to wrap his fist around her spindly upper arm. She jerks away too late and skitters along the floor, though he’s holding her up somewhat. Her feet slide out from under her and her claws scour deep gouges into the wood. She hisses, feeling all the hairs on her body rise at rapt attention.

She can tell Fjord is unnerved by how skinny her arm is, how easily he’s able to wrap his hand around it and have his thumb and forefinger touch.

“Why would you do this? Don’t you know this just makes you…” he motions at all of her with a quick jerk of his head.

“I’m not fuckin’ stupid, _Fjord_. I know how it makes me. I know what a high is like.” she spits, hoping the acid in her tone burns him the same way his grip does. It reminds her of the way her littermates would wrench her skin, twisting their calloused little hands in opposing directions and leaving her with arms that felt like they were burning while they cackled at her for falling for the same trick _again, Nott-the-Brave_.

“Why would you do it, though?” There’s an intensity in his yellow eyes that burns through the swirling kaleidoscope of green.

“I don’t do this because I want to, Fjord. I’ve never done this because I wanted to.”

He regards her for a moment, and if she weren’t buzzing with anger and fear beneath the mask of her high, she would swear she sees his eyes soften for a moment before he releases her arm and practically shoves her backwards. She rolls back onto her ass, digging the ragged, broken claws of her hands into the wood beneath her, lips threatening to peel back in a sneer.

“Don’t you dare tell them about this- don’t you dare tell _him_ about this. I’ve never done this because I wanted to, and I never will.” she snarls.

He looks at her with something akin to sadness in his eyes, before he turns on his heel and walks out the door, slamming it shut behind him, his heavy boots thudding on the creaky steps down to the tavern floor before the excited murmur of their compatriots floats up to her sensitive ears through the wooden floor. She sneers at his back, and at the door when he leaves. She knows he has plenty of secrets. He better let her keep this one.

And they call her greedy. They all have their hands full of secrets, of things she’s seen, of things they don’t think she knows because they’ll forever think of her as a stupid little kid. A dumb little goblin girl who can shoot arrows decently on occasion, who is good at swiping things they want and picking locks for them because they’re too clumsy to do so. She only does what she has to, take what she needs to, to keep the Itch satiated and keep the hum under her skin that rattles her bones and plucks at her nerves from taking over. It pulls at her spine, anchoring her to the floor. She hopes beyond hope he lets her keep this one damn secret.

“I’ve never done this because I wanted to.” she says, again, to the empty room. It floats up, away, trailing through the window and dispersing into the evening air, the same way her sickly sweet smoke rings had. The same way they always will. The same way she will, one day. She doesn’t matter to them. She’s just gotta make herself count while she’s here, and silence the violent hum threatening to break through the shell of her skin in the meantime.

**Author's Note:**

> hey full disclosure: i've never been high in my entire damn life, though i'm pretty sure that that's obvious, but it's fantasy weed anyway sO


End file.
